


Graduation Day

by historymiss



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/pseuds/historymiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What does it mean to fall?” Leia asks her brother, when it’s still academic, Ben just a curve in her belly, potential that’s only scary in the way all babies are.</p><p>“How could you-” Leia remembers the feel of chain straining in her hands, the hole in her chest when her planet died. “If it happened to you, how would you tell?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graduation Day

“What does it mean to fall?” Leia asks her brother, when it’s still academic, Ben just a curve in her belly, potential that’s only scary in the way all babies are.

“How could you-” Leia remembers the feel of chain straining in her hands, the hole in her chest when her planet died. “If it happened to you, how would you tell?" 

Luke is still trying to work that one out. He’s sifting through what Obi-Wan and Yoda taught him, deciding what’s useful and what was just two old men trying to undo the mistakes of the past. 

"I don’t know.” He replies in the end, open and honest in the way only Luke can be. “Falling might be the wrong word for it.” He thinks of the face of his father, the failing squeeze-box whine of his breath incongruous with the strength that he used when he held onto his son.

“Maybe it’s more like letting go.”

—

 

Ben is five, chubby fists and wild, dark hair and a serious expression, and Han still holds him like he might explode which, of course, isn’t a bad premonition, given how things will turn out. He’s proud though. He has to be proud, right?

(“Do it normally, Ben.” Han hears himself say for the sixteenth time that day, watching a toy float across the room, and when his son looks at him, he pushes down the sudden, desperate urge to run away) 

—

Ben is nine, and he’s quiet, which is not the same as being good. He talks to himself at night, lying in his bed, coming to breakfast sullen with dark shadows under his eyes. He picks at his food, grunts like a teenager, and spends a lot of time staring at nothing in particular.

One day, he asks what the dark side is- Leia responds, carefully, that it’s fear, and anger, and wanting to keep yourself away from other people. 

“But we don’t do that, Ben.” She kneels to make sure he can see her face, her eyes, her intent. “You and I and your uncle Luke, we stay far away from the dark side.”

Ben nods at this like he’s understood something. 

—

Ben is fifteen, and he sits in a swamp next to his uncle scrubbing away a mixture of tears and mud from his face with his sleeve. It’s just the two of them (it’s just the two of them a lot). Ben hates that he gets special attention, and craves it in equal measure. The other students whisper that there’s something wrong with him, and that Luke is trying to fix it. 

This isn’t a surprise to any of them, it seems. After all, look at Ben’s grandfather.

Ben is afraid it can’t be fixed. He has been for a long, long time. Luke, gentle and uncomprehending, tells him that this fear will pass, in time, and it must not master him. 

“It’s normal to be afraid, Ben. But you can conquer it if you try.”

The fear does not pass- but Ben finds a new master all the same.

—

Ben is twenty-three, and he is tired of explaining how he feels.

The lightsaber is new, and it feels heavy- heavier than he expected. If he’d had more time, maybe he’d have built a better one. Ben turns it over in his hands, sighs. Probably not. He’ll make do. 

He should have been a Jedi by now, Ben- no, he’s going to need a new name- reflects, standing up and watching the blade burn to life. In the normal course of things. He should have been his uncle’s best and brightest, the first of a new generation.

As if that was ever a possibility. 

After all, look at his grandfather.


End file.
